The Perfect Landscape by Ragna Sigurðardóttir Read Free Book Online

aftershave.
    “It’s in good condition, isn’t it?” she says for want of something to say. Although she knows Gudrun’s work very well, she has no experience of this sort of analysis; that is the conservator’s specialist area.
    “Yes, I suppose so,” answers Steinn, glancing at her, but she doesn’t immediately meet his eyes. It’s as if he’s looking slightly to one side, but she can’t see for sure and can’t very well gaze into his eyes. She looks back at the painting.
    “This painting must have been listed when Gudrun sold her paintings at auction in Copenhagen to fund her time in Paris,” she says.
    Hanna’s mind is on Steinn’s eyes, she wants to scrutinize them, stare into them, and she wonders what it would be like to sink into his gaze; she has to pull herself together for a second before continuing.
    “It all fits, you see. Two paintings listed for auction, both of which were sold, both with a birch motif, and one of them is fifty-by-seventy centimeters, just like this one. I was looking into it just the other day.”
    “Yes, this could well be,” says Steinn reflectively. He’s waiting for Hanna to look at the picture more carefully. When she just looks at him inquiringly, he gives a tentative cough.
    “I noticed something when I first saw the painting,” he explains. “Look at the sky here.” He points with a gloved finger at the brushstrokes in the paint that don’t match the soft banks of cloud. “These lines are coarser than in other parts of the picture and they lie directly across the clouds.”
    Hanna sees what he means now that he’s pointed it out.
    “Yes, it’s obvious,” she says. “In all probability there’s another painting underneath. That’s not uncommon, is it? Especially with a painting from this period, when painters were struggling to get a hold of canvas and oils?”
    Steinn doesn’t respond; he just carries on running his finger over the painting and points Hanna to other brushstrokes that cut straight across
The Birches
. For a moment they stare at the picture in silence.
    “I was thinking, you see, the timing. This was painted, what—before 1940?” asks Steinn.
    “Probably 1937 or ’38,” Hanna replies.
    “But the picture underneath looks more like an abstract painting. This means that if Gudrun painted her picture overanother painting, then that painting must have been virtually brand-new.”
    Hanna digests this. She can’t work out why Steinn is being so cautious, as though he believes there’s something significant here. But maybe it’s just his way—to be wary until everything is clear beyond question. He is trying to tell her something without saying it straight-out, and she’s not sure where he’s going with this. Maybe he’s intimating that it’s a forgery, but she thinks that’s unlikely. The painting isn’t in any way amateurish, and it’s in total harmony with Gudrun’s style. It’s a beautiful painting.
    “The Danish abstract painters were beginning to work in that style by then,” she says. “Obviously constructivism is older. Do you mean this is that genre?”
    Steinn shakes his head. “This is more like abstract expressionism. Or, well, it could conceivably be. Perhaps in the spirit of abstract works that were painted in the wake of the CoBrA movement. That shape could be a half-moon.”
    Hanna waits in case he has more to add, but Steinn goes quiet.
    “Or a boat,” she suggests. “Harbors and boats were a popular motif back then.” She peers at the painting but doesn’t see a half-moon.
    “I want to show you this using raking light,” says Steinn patiently, and Hanna senses his underlying tenacity, which she is beginning to recognize. She knows she has to let him take the lead in this; he must be allowed to do this his way, whatever that is.
    Lifting the painting off the table, Steinn carries it into a small storage area off the large workroom with Hannafollowing behind. He sets the painting on an easel, and,